Mr Halifa Sallah, the spokesperson of National Alliance for Democracy and Development (NADD), has made arguably the strongest reaction yet to President Jammeh’s recent announcement of a 20% salary increment for “all Civil Servants across the board.”

“I don’t think a President in the first place has any powers to go on Television and say that he has increased salaries. If you look at the Constitutional provisions, a president cannot even determine his own salary but rather it should be done by an act of parliament,” Mr Sallah elucidated.

In an exclusive interview with The Point, the NADD spokesperson described the salary increment as a reflection of the lack of management of the national economy and the state by the APRC on the basis of the constitutional provisions.

“Gambia has one of the smallest Civil Service [set-ups] in the world. If you look at what people are paid, D500 for a messenger or even drivers, how can anybody survive on that? And you look at a qualified teacher receiving D1500 a month. Nobody can survive with a family on that,” he fumed.

Mr Sallah maintained that the Gambia needs a head of state that understands and recognizes that he does not control the national budget but that the money belongs to the tax payers who gave the authority only to manage the executive.

“This is a government which has been sub-changing the public service since it came into office. It has been sub-changing the public service since it came into office. It has not evaluated the value of their work and is not rewarding them for that work,” he said, adding that it has been the norm that people get paid starvation wages to the extent that they resort to devising other dubious means of survival- hence the perpetuation of the Taf Taf syndrome.

In Mr Sallah’s view, the proper way of managing a state especially after controlling successive budgets in over 13 years would have been for the APRC government to know the annual turnover of public corporations like GAMTEL, GPTC, GPA, etc. and work towards greater efficiency so as to enable them to contribute more dividends to government.

He went on to indicate that the first step that the APRC regime should have taken was to institute a Salaries Commission from the onset and mandate it to assess each work being done and its relative value.

“So if you just jump and increase salaries by 20%, it means are you actually saying that for the person receiving D500 will have D100 added to his salary and for the person receiving D1000 will have D200 increment on his salary whiles inflation is skyrocketing,” Mr Sallah inferred, charging that this state is not very concerned with efficiency and proper management of a society.

In conclusion he said, “If you go to the ferry terminal, the fare to Barra has been increased from D5 to D7. So if you are living in Barra going and coming as a messenger, what has 20% done for you?”